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Bookeen breakthrough: real-time web page scrolling on eInk panel

Time for another peek behind the scenes at what’s going on in the R&D department at Bookeen! This video demonstrates the real-time web page scrolling made possible thanks to optimisation of the display speed. Enjoy!

Thank you ET3D, what a lovely comment. 🙂 I’m honestly not sure that this speed will be possible via a software upgrade only (I think it needs also specific hardware) but in any case we are certainly hoping to make it available in a Cybook soon. 🙂 Stay tuned…

Obviously I want this now, like everyone else. It seems you’ve been playing around with the Eink Pearl for a while now (playing video earlier), but so far no products have been announced based on it. Please give us some hints 🙂 Can we expect something this year?

Hello Samael and Elessar,
thanks for your comments. Currently most screens are around 6″ mainly for logistical reasons; first because the larger the screen, the more fragile it is and the more subject it is to torsion which can break it, and second because larger sizes quickly become very expensive. However as the technology matures we will certainly see larger screens particularly once screens with plastic substrates instead of glass become available. Of course, it is a question of taste, also, and some people prefer a smaller screen. My personal preference is for a 5″ screen for example because it’s smaller and lighter and much more portable. 🙂 To each his own!
Best regards,
Bookeen Team

+1 for larger displays. I do not know why all the readers in the market are ≤ 6″ but this is even smaller than a pocket book page: I do accommodate to it but I keep the feeling that it is quite small. To me, 7″ would be perfect.

Hello Luca,
for material reasons we won’t be able to propose this speed on the Orizon, unfortunately. It’s partly thanks to highly optimised software, but also partly due to new generation hardware developments.
Best regards,
Bookeen Team

A lot can be improved by just a driver update!
Current e-screen drivers are optimized for screen refresh, but not optimized for panning. with a good driver, you could update parts of the screen instead of the whole screen. You could also update parts of the screen at different intervals. By directing the graphics processor these advanced calculations, much of e-ink screens can be optimized. Granted, at this stage there might be a lot of blur and glitches, but as the technology and software matures, many bugs can be eliminated.
I for instance do not see why it’s impossible for all current ebook devices to run a game of DOOM (See youtube video of e-ink device running doom).

It’s just in how the driver is updated. In a way it’s perfectly possible to see gif files at a refresh rate of close to 2fps, even if e-ink only refreshes at 0,5-1fps, it is possible to refresh certain (say all the even) pixels at their optimum refresh rate, and refresh the uneven pixels at the opposite interval (eg even pixels every 1 seconds, uneven pixels every 0.5, 1.5, 2.5,… seconds).
That would be one way to optimize e-ink.
The above video might even use 3 or 4 pixel rows for refreshing, meaning, while one set of pixels is refreshing at the second, the others might be refreshing at 1/4th past the second, 1/2past, and 3/4th past.

Technically it’s possible to expand that to a time resolution of 16, 32 or even 64 subdivisions, making it appear as if e-ink allows fluid motion (with some blur).

Thanks for the tips you have provided here. Another thing I would like to convey is that laptop memory demands generally rise along with other breakthroughs in the know-how. For instance, any time new generations of cpus are made in the market, there is certainly usually a matching increase in the shape calls for of both personal computer memory along with hard drive space. This is because software program operated by simply these processor chips will inevitably rise in power to benefit from the new engineering.